Tonight, The Blacklistseason 6 episode 11 delivered “Bastien Moreau,” the first part of an epic two-part story like no other. The stakes are high when Raymond Reddington’s life are on the line, and that’s made even more complicated by what the Task Force had to do in order to save him.

Reddington’s always got a card to play and tonight, that came courtesy of a conspiracy and an assassination plot. He had key intel that could slow this plot down, but he demanded clemency in return from the top person in all the land — the President of the United States. What Reddington didn’t quite realize was just how involved the President was in everything himself. He and his right-hand woman were conspiring to commit murder against a high-level German official named Ava Ziegler, and the moment that some of this started to become clear, so did something else — maybe this was Reddington’s plan all along.

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Think about things this way — what if Reddington’s goal was to expose the President and if that happened, the entire government would fall apart? If he achieved this, he could be viewed as more heroic than ever … which could ensure his future. That’s just our own twisted theory for the time being.

Now, let’s get to the person who seems to be tasked for the assassination itself: Bastien Moreau. He was the person responsible for taking on this task of taking down Ziegler, and as he inched closer to stopping her, the FBI also had to do their job — Cooper eventually ended up securing her — while that may have saved her life, it also doomed Reddington.

Was Ziegler really safe? Well, here’s the thing — it seems as though the Corsican managed to find a way to kill Ziegler without anyone noticing. As a matter of fact, he took a page from General Shiro with the bugs.

As it turns out, almost everything seems to be connected — many different

Liz’s confession

While the Task Force continued to try to piece together some of the important parts of this mystery, Liz Keen had a different task: Going to be with Reddington in the event that this does turn out to be his final meal. She saw this as the last opportunity to learn the truth about his actual identity, and there was also a human part to this story since she did care for him — despite her being responsible for his arrest, she never wanted to see him die.

Reddington’s “last meal” was cabbage soup with herring (Eastern European — a possible clue for those Reddington-is-Katarina fans out there), and during that conversation, he told her a thing or two about his upbringing, including a different relationship with his father and admiring his mother. He also told her that she had the only thing in her life that matters — people who love her and people who care about her.

Here’s the funny thing — right when Liz had the proper opportunity to ask about his real identity, she opted not to. She realized in that moment that it didn’t really matter who he was — it was who he was to her instead. That’s why she told him “I love you” as he prepared to walk to his death.

In the final moments tonight, Reddington was ready to die — meanwhile, the President celebrated his victory and their goal of burying a key dossier would be done. They knew that with him gone, nobody else would know anything.

What’s happening with Samar and Aram?

By accident tonight (one of many for Aram within this episode — remember when he dropped the keys in the toilet?), he ended up learning the truth about her aphasia and what she’s been going through. They’re now on roughly the same page together, though it’s clear already that Aram wants to treat her differently and that’s not something that she is altogether willing to allow. She wants to be the same exact Samar, crime-fighting extraordinaire, that she’s always been.

CarterMatt Verdict

Excellent. That’s the best, one-word way to describe this episode. This was one of the best of the series in our mind — not only did it give some of the Blacklisters this season a larger theme, it proved further that Reddington almost always has a plan … even if it doesn’t always work out precisely as you would expect.